Opinion pieces, travel articles, places and people; lots of poetry; commentary on current events and history and whatever else shows up on the radar. Articles have been numbered (since Sept. 2004). Go n-eiri an t-adh leat.

Monday, March 28, 2005

Gore Vidal stands apart from the American mainstream (he is, in fact, related to the former vice-president Al Gore and also to the late Jackie Kennedy) in that he turned away from the land of his birth and upbringing and in the manner of a much earlier generation of East Coast intellectuals (Whistler, Sargent, Henry James) sought and found a more congenial setting for his art in Europe. Although living in exile - in a comfortable villa in Italy, as it happens - Vidal, like Joyce before him, never took his eyes off his native country and has written a series of novels concerned with American social, historical and political themes.

While still living in America in the 1950s and 60s he was a provocative figure who got up the nose of the Great and the Good. He was both physically attacked by Norman Mailer and verbally abused (on live television) by William Buckley, Jr. He deplores the imperial overreach of his homeland - and has done so consistently since the early years of the Cold War - while maintaining his own form of awkward, clear-eyed patriotism. He fought as a soldier in World War II and characterises his life's work and outspoken opinions (those familiar with Roman history will recognise the analogy) as a last-ditch defence of the American Republic. I would urge you to read the full interview by clicking on the link at the bottom of this post. (dedalus)

The man himself

In an interview with Steve Perry of the Minneapolis/St Paul City Pages Gore Vidal speaks on war for oil, politics-free elections, and the late, great U.S. Constitution.

Excerpt:

CP: Clearly Bush does represent something radical and new, and there's been an understandable tendency on the part of people who don't like where the country is going to focus their outrage exclusively on Bush and the Republicans. But don't the media and the Democrats come in for a great deal of blame for creating the political vacuum in which he rose?

Vidal: Well, the media is on the other side. The media belongs to the big money, and the big money, their candidates, their party, is the Republican Party as now constituted. So everybody is behaving typically [in media]. What isn't typical is a Democratic Party that has also sold out. There are just as many lobbyists and propagandists there as on the other side. They're never going to regain anything until they remember that they're supposed to represent the people at large, and not the very rich.

But they need the very rich in order to be able to run for office, to buy television time. I'd say if you really want to date the crash of the American system, the American republic, it was in the early '50s, when television suddenly emerged as the central fact of American life. That which was not televised did not exist. And any preacher, because religion is tax-free--I would tax all the religions, by the way--any evangelical who wants to get up there and say, send me millions of dollars and I will cure you of your dandruff, he gets to spend the money any way he likes, and there's no tax on it. So he can have political action groups, which he's not supposed to have but does have. So you have all that religious money, and then you have the enormous cost of campaigning, which means every politician who wants to buy TV time has got to sell his ass to somebody. And corporate America is ready to buy.

CP: Likewise, there's a great tendency among his detractors to call Bush stupid. You've called him "dumb," albeit not as dumb as his dad. But I'm recalling what you wrote about Ronald Reagan years ago in your review of the Ronnie Leamer book about him: that no one who's stupid aces every career test he faces. The same is clearly not true of George W. Bush, who had failed in a lot of things before he entered politics. But he hasn't failed in politics. Do you think Bush possesses a kind of intelligence akin to Reagan's in that regard, or is that giving him too much credit? How do you think his mind works?

Vidal: I should think very oddly. He's dyslexic, which means--it's a problem of incoherence. I have some dyslexia in my family, and they can be reasonably intelligent about most things, but they have problems with words, the structure of language. Not really getting it. There's an inability to study anything. Sometimes they also have an attention deficiency and so on.

I would say that he is undisturbed by these things. His is a mind totally lacking in culture of any kind. I'm not talking about highbrow culture, just knowledge of the American past, and our institutions. He's got rid of due process of law, which is what the United States is based upon. Once you can send somebody off and put them in the brig of a ship in Charleston Harbor and hold them as long as you like uncharged, you have destroyed the United States and its Constitution. He has done those things.

Saturday, March 26, 2005

here I sit, drawingelephants for another man's child,recalling, with pain, the deathof my daughter, when was it,eleven years ago?

she would have been seventeen

seventeen, sweet and lovely,convinced she was ugly,worried about pimples,horrified, yet very attracted to boys,glued to her mobile phone;

it's not so hard to imagine

that day, crystal clearin memory, I will never forget;it was all so casual, my wifesimply wanted to get her hair done,asked me to care for the child;

if only days could be lived over, taken back

the sun shining, I thought,sweetheart, let's go for a walk,would you like that, alanna?and she, all smiles and trust,put on her coat and took my hand;

why, oh why didn't we stay at home?

down on the street, as usual,the traffic went whizzing by;I held her hand, tightly,and we talked about important things,her school, her friends, her questions;

fathers can love children they do not physically bear

a friend, John O'Farrell,hove into view: well, is it yourselfI asked, loosing my gripon the child to shake his hand,and that's when it happened;

no blame to you, John, but stay out of my sight

the police, sympathetic,say the death was instantaneous:when she stepped off the kerbthe driver, a Pakistani immigrant,had no chance to stop;

mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!

eleven long years, not oneday goes by when I don't reliveeach moment: my wife, tight-lipped, never blamed me; the divorce came through six months later.------------------------------------

Note: This poem has received a number of shocked and sympathetic responses on an Internet poetry forum where it was posted last week. I would like to reassure readers that the events in the poem are not biographical; I was just trying to write from the position of every parent's worst nightmare.

Saturday, March 05, 2005

Japan is a neon tangle of buildings and streets and black-haired people scuttling among indecipherable signs flashing flashing with vending machines on every city block dispensing condoms and coca-cola and coffee beer and cigarettes farm-fresh eggs whatever you want but don't really need in a never-ending mechanical amoral hedonistic cornocupia

Japan when you step off the plane for the first time overwhelms your senses and makes you think seriously you are on some other planet nobody understands a word you say but when you leave the "gaijin" cocoon tentatively, slowly full of misgivings as when you first do something unusual you can't help smiling

Japan sucks you in even Tokyo a frenetic urban nightmare with a whiff of drains entrances your roving imagination enhances your sliding divorce from familiarity this country this whole damn archipelago is Disneyland on wheels and when you get food drink and shelter (a job) you start to think hoo boy!

Japan revolves around you spinning because you are a drop-in from Mars you can't understand you can't speak you can't read and you sure as hell can't write so you wander about like an amiable impressionable idiot and this is when the first great decision comes you either seek out other exiles to complain to commiserate to criticise or else you jump into the strangeness

Japan is surprisingly tolerant of opinionated loudmouths from overseas, but when you crawl out from under that shell you start to discover a different country in which delicacy of feeling sensitivity and a strong reverence for ancient traditions still exists in a quiet restrained understated way as if the people were shy to share age-old convictions with yawping barbarians

Japan is umbillically attuned to each passing season festivals and family gatherings are faithfully observed from generation to generation but done so casually so confidently you sense with a surge of sudden knowledge that you are walking in the presence of the past and the long-dead generations look down benignly and with fond affection on the children of the present you can feel that and after a while want to be part of it

Japan is almost wilfully misunderstood we think of them as a nation of worker robots in a way that repairs our pride and appeases the pain of Pearl Harbour Bataan, the Bangkok Railway and puts them down belittling the fangs of a former enemy (a formidable people when aroused) who scared the living bejesus out of our grandfathers but you wouldn't know it now, with everything so clean so polite so efficient you can drop your wallet on the street and pick it up next week

Japan begins to open its inner doors after fearful painful struggle when you start to crack the hard nutty core of language in the first three years sweating blood you think you are doing well in the next three years you come to realize you know nothing so when I saw that fashionable movie Lost in Translation I thought: what these people are doing is celebrating their own incomprehension their alienation in the hope of getting back to the Real World soon

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

At Lansdowne Road last Sunday Ireland held off a determined onslaught from Andy Robinson's England team to maintain their unbroken streak of wins (Italy, Scotland, now England) and stay on course for their first Grand Slam in 57 years. They are now three-fifths of the way to breaking a jinx that has lasted since 1948, provided they can overcome the French in Dublin on March 12 and beat Wales in Cardiff on March 19. Wales is also off to a brilliant start this season with three wins of its own (England, Italy, France) and this year's Six Nations championship could come to a Celtic Showdown with Ireland on the 19th.

... and grounds the ball for a try seconds later.

The Irish supporters, who had been on tenterhooks all afternoon, roared out their relief and joy and headed for the pubs and clubs of Dublin -- there to celebrate the victory of the Boys in Green, and perhaps raise a quiet toast of gratitude to the referee, who had disallowed two questionable English tries. The English are still in an uproar over this, but their first try had been pretty shaky as well, when O'Gara had been tackled off the ball. Ah, sure, that's what's called the 'rub of the green': some days you get the decisions; others you don't. The lads played a blinder and they deserved to win.